Don’t Let Doctors Take Charge of Your Lower Back Pain
One-Third of Non-Surgery Patients Would Have Had Surgery if They Had Followed Their Doctors’ Advice
Eleven out of thirty-two US survey participants decided against their doctors’ recommendations of surgery for lower back pain. Here are a few of their stories.
A farmer with a ruptured disc had compelling reasons for not following his doctor’s recommendation to have surgery. ‘I needed to plant my crops or risk losing everything. So I rested a bit and planted in spite of the pain. Then things improved, so I never did need surgery. I think the rest and exercise was all I needed for my lower back pain relief’
“You need surgery,” an orthopedic surgeon told me after giving me a diagnosis of ruptured disc,’ an executive reported. ‘I mentally wasn’t ready to have my back opened up so I rested for two weeks and then gradually started to exercise. My pain has now dropped enough to let me function, though with limitations.’
‘You won’t believe what an orthopedic surgeon told me twenty years ago,’ a commercial artist remarked. The doctor said that it might take months, or even years, but that sooner or later I would crawl into his office on my hands and knees, begging to be operated on. I’ve had episodes of pain that keep me from working a few weeks every year. So, even now, more than twenty years later, I’m still not sure I made the right choice about not having surgery. But can you believe that doctor’s incredible attitude?’
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